As our semester begins at Georgia Southern, students are asking me questions via e-mail about our online classes. Rather than responding individually (so only one student can benefit), I’ve created a list of FAQs so that all can benefit.
1. How do I find out when things are due? (And will you make us a calendar for all the due dates?)
The quickest, easiest way to find out due dates for assignments is to look at the Calendar feature in GeorgiaVIEW. You can also find due dates for Assignments on the Assignments tab and RATS/quizzes on the Assessments tab. [NOTE: Blog posts are the exception. Weekly blog posts are due in this class, and they will not appear on the GeorgiaVIEW Calendar.]
2. Why do we need a headset/mic? What kind should we buy?
For the times that we’re meeting online at the same time (synchronously), you will need to be able to hear what I am saying and occasionally respond by voice. You can find inexpensive ones at Amazon, OfficeMax or Walmart.
3. What’s expected in our blogs?
See the post I’ve written about blog content for your specific course:
- PRCA 3330: PR Writing (coming soon)
4. I will be out of town for a week. Will that impact my grade in this course?
Since our class is online, your engagement and participation will be evaluated by your continuous completion of assignments and blog posts. If you are out of town, just be sure that you are keeping up with due dates.
5. What’s the “Public Relations Matters” section on our GeorgiaVIEW home page for?
At the bottom of each page for our course in GeorgiaVIEW there is a section titled “Public Relations Matters.” What you will see there is an RSS feed of the last four blog posts that you find here on my blog. It’s just a quick and easy way for you to see what’s new on my blog.
6. When will we be meeting synchronously (online at the same time)?
We will meet on Mondays at 5 p.m. in the Wimba Live Classroom in GeorgiaVIEW. (NOTE: We will not meet EVERY Monday, but to start the semester, we will meet most of the Mondays.) If you cannot attend a session, you’ll have the opportunity to view the “archive” (replay) of the session at a later time. After the first week of class, when I schedule a synchronous session, I will always send a meeting notice to you via Google Calendar. Please either accept or decline the notice so I can know who will attend.
7. Can I use my Gmail (or other account) instead of my Georgia Southern account for e-mail?
For consistency and reliability, GeorgiaSouthern requires faculty members to use our university-provided e-mail accounts for communicating with students. What you may want to do is set up your Gmail to automatically fetch your GSU e-mail, so you’ll only have one place to look. (That’s what I do.)
8. How often should I check my e-mail?
Check your e-mail at least once a day, preferably more. For our class, I will not send you a same-day assignment; I don’t think that’s fair. But I do send occasional reminders or clarifications that could help you with assignments you are working on. I also typically will send a tweet (on Twitter) letting you know to check your e-mail.
9. How will you do your office hours?
You’ll be able to find me in a Wimba Live Classroom (found on your class’ GeorgiaVIEW home page) quite often throughout the week. My office hours are held in the room labeled Virtual Office for Prof. Nixon’s Virtual Office. When I am in there, you can ask questions via chat, audio or audio & video; I can respond using the same methods. Remind me which class you are in when you stop by my virtual office.
10. My other professors haven’t used GeorgiaVIEW as much as you are using it. Can you show me how to use it?
GeorgiaSouthern has created several tutorials on using GeorgiaVIEW. Spend some time reviewing these tutorials; it will be worth the time you invest. I also created a short overview of how I use it. It’s best to ask another classmate first, then come to me if you have further questions on GeorgiaVIEW.
Do you have other questions?
Image Credit: "photoshop practice again" by nats
This fall, I am working with a university to develop an online version of its traditional classroom First-Year Experience class for incoming freshmen. Even though as a parent of a college almost-senior and a college freshman I feel like I keep up with trends, it’s always good to check out Beloit College’s annual Mindset List to help understand some of the cultural references that are common to students entering college now.
And why is this type of list important for educators? It helps us to remember to keep the examples we use in class fresh and relevant. I recall the sounds of crickets chirping in the room a few years ago when I asked if anyone could relate to having an Arnold Horshack in the class with them. Don’t want that to happen to me again. Or to anyone else.
The complete list is at Beloit’s site; I’ve extracted a few of my favorites from the annual Mindset List below:
For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead.
They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
They never saw the “Scud Stud” (but there have always been electromagnetic stud finders.)
Babies have always had a Social Security Number.
They have never had to “shake down” an oral thermometer.
American students have always lived anxiously with high-stakes educational testing.
There has always been a Cartoon Network.
We have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
Ozzy Osbourne has always been coming back.
There have always been flat screen televisions.
Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
They have never been Saved by the Bell.
Most communities have always had a mega-church.
Nobody has ever responded to “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
There has always been blue Jell-O.
Photo Credit: "brinkley at dovedale" by Vicki Hughes
[8-31-2010 NEW: This post was featured by Lisa B. Marshall in her The Public Speaker podcast. Thanks, Lisa!]
When you’ve been invited to be a guest speaker for an organization’s luncheon or other meeting, you don’t want to be that speaker. And it can be terribly easy to be that speaker: You know, that high-maintenance one, or that boring/irrelevant one. You want to be the one who is memorable for positive reasons. Here’s a list of 14 ways to NOT suck.
- Learn as much as you can about your audience before you speak. (This is a good tip for any public speaking situation.) Even if you don’t know much about the organization beforehand, you can learn a lot during the mealtime, if that’s part of your engagement with them. During the meal, listen more than you talk. When your presentation begins, weave in examples that you know are relevant to this group.
- Find out from your contact at the organization what the norms are for speaking engagements like this one. Will the audience members expect handouts? Is there usually a Q&A session? What’s the best way for you to share your contact information with every audience member?
- Let your contact know what your A/V needs are as far in advance as possible, and only request what is necessary. Avoid last minute surprises, as they often cannot be accommodated — and they turn you into that speaker.
- Plan your presentation so that you can expand it or contract it as needed. Even though you may have been told you have 45 minutes, you may discover that the business portion of the meeting has run long, and you end up with just 30 minutes. Make no mention of shortening your presentation to your audience; just do it. Gracefully.
- Allow extra time in travel to arrive at the meeting location, especially if you have never been there before. Some things to keep in mind: Is there construction along your route? Do you cross train tracks on the way? When do the trains typically stop traffic? Do you know how to get into the parking lot? How far is it from the exterior doors to your meeting room? And never trust your GPS 100% to get you to a new location.
- Know how to use the technology you will be using, inside and out. Practice hooking up all the cords and cables and know how long it will take you. Know how to easily blacken the screen during your presentation when the slides are not needed (in PowerPoint, simply press B to blacken the screen, and then any other key to bring the slide back up). Do you have something new with you? In front of your audience is not the place to learn how to use your new presentation remote.
- Plan for the technology to fail. Always have hard-copy notes for your presentation, just in case you cannot rely on a PowerPoint slide to jog your memory for what to say. Save your presentation as a PowerPoint and as a PDF, and store it on your computer and a USB drive. (Yes, it’s like wearing a belt with suspenders. Twice. And I’m okay with that.)
- Never let your audience see anything on your computer other than the slide deck or other information you intend for them to see. They don’t (or at least shouldn’t) have any interest in watching you boot up your computer, open your file and put it in presentation mode. Keep the projector screen blank until you have your opening slide up. (And never be that speaker who preps her presentation in full view of the whole room while someone else is still speaking; I find this terribly rude to the other speaker.)
- Don’t count on the Internet working 100% perfectly. If I plan to show a YouTube video clip, I always download the video to my computer and show it from there. (I’ve recently been using YouTube Downloader, a free app, and it works quickly and easily for me on my PC.) If I plan to demo a certain website, I’ll use Snag-It to take and save a few screen captures to show in case I cannot access the site during my presentation.
- Provide contact information on each slide or at the end. I like to have a detailed contact info slide as the last one in my slide deck, and I leave that slide up during the Q&A session.
- If you refer to websites or blogs in your presentation, create a set of social bookmarks for your audience so they can go to one URL to find all the links and not spend time during your presentation attempting to furiously scribble down all the addresses. I use Delicious for my social bookmarks. Let your audience know early in the presentation where they can find all the links.
- Upload your slides to SlideShare at least a day before your presentation if you want your audience (and others) to have access to them. You can choose to keep the slides private until just before or after the presentation, if you wish.
- The show must go on; be prepared to speak even if you don’t look quite perfect. For example, yesterday, I got caught in a deluge just as I opened my car door arriving at a speaking event. Even with an umbrella, I was drenched (kind of like the cute, wet puppy at the top of this post — at least in my mind). My shoes and blazer sleeves were literally dripping when I entered the venue. What did I do? Dashed into the restroom, grabbed some paper towels, mopped up what I could, and put a smile on my face.
- Arrive with your speaker’s toolkit in tip-top order. I think I almost got a hug from the conference room tech guy at my last speaking event because I had everything I needed, and more. What’s in mine? Here’s what I typically carry with me:
-
- Computer & power cord
- Power strip
- External speakers with their power cord (just in case there’s no sound system attached to the projector)
- 3.5mm cord to connect speakers to computer (even if I have my Bluetooth-enabled computer and speakers with me, I have the cord as a backup)
- Projector (only if I know that there is not one available for me onsite)
- Presentation remote
- Extra set of batteries for anything that uses batteries
- Hard candy or throat lozenges
- More business cards than I think I could possibly need
So in a large nutshell, these are my 14 best tips on how not to suck as a guest speaker for an organization. What additional tips would you offer?
